Present Tense
by Lizzie Black
Summary: In a life where everything is hidden behind facades, the only true thoughts are those they think when they're alone. Sydney, Lauren, Sark and Vaughn contemplate life and love. Third season.


_You are the only thing that makes sense – just __ignore__ all this present tense…_

You Could Be Happy – Snow Patrol

…..

She is not crying. There's no use in crying, not really, that much she has learned. But she's drinking. Not in hopes that it helps (she knows very well it won't) but just so she could get rid of this bottle of wine in her fridge.

(he used to bring wine when he came over)

It hardly matters that it's 3.37 am. It makes no difference that she has a briefing at eight am. Time makes no difference. She's lost two years already – an hour or two won't change a thing.

(he always used to tell her to get enough sleep)

The wine is almost gone now. She's not quite drunk – not as much as she would like to be. But it's enough to mellow her, soften the sharp edges and hard lines that make up the person she has become. Her father, Dixon, Weiss – if they could see her now. She figures they would be more than surprised.

(if only he could see her now)

And the truth – the ever-evasive truth – is that she can hardly bring herself to care about anything anymore. The wine, the lack of sleep – nothing changes the fact that come morning, she will still have to get up, go to work, save the world. Watch the man she still loves play _happy families_ with another woman.

(if only she could delete him, compartmentalise _him_, like she does everything else, but he just refuses to fit in the nice little niche in the back of her mind where she has stored him away)

_**aliasaliasalias.**_

She'd gotten lucky with her job, that much she knows. It could have been anybody – fat, balding, old enough to be her father – but she got him. And if there's anything he is, it's good-looking. For that, she's grateful.

All in all, it's not the hardest mission she's ever had. It isn't really all that difficult to play pretend with him. He's a good husband; even she has to admit that.

Of course, she's very committed to her job as his wife. She makes him dinner, knots his tie, calls him just to say she loves him (it's the little things that matter, her mother always said). If she does enjoy this just a _tiny_ bit too much, she's not about to acknowledge that. It's just a job. And she's made a habit of being good at everything she does. He's just another errand on her to-do list.

It's easy enough to ignore that stab of emotion she feels every time she catches him looking at a picture of _her_ again. It's not jealousy, she keeps telling herself, there's nothing to be jealous of. That woman is a part of his past, the very thing that makes her mission possible. His grief was her greatest ally, because it rendered him vulnerable, helpless against her educated machinations. He's her puppet to play with, now, and that woman (Sydney, that's her name) is the one who made it possible in the first place.

It's irony, pure irony, that it's her reappearance that has turned everything upside down, has made the mission that much more difficult, has added keeping her marriage together to the list of things Lauren has to do.

A job is still a job though, and failure is not in her vocabulary (she's a senator's daughter, after all). She will succeed, in that she is confident.

(if only she could get rid of the nagging in the back of her head, telling her that maybe they could have been something, in another world, one which didn't include Sydney Bristow, the Covenant or her mother)

_**aliasaliasalias.**_

Money. It's the most important thing. He has always known that, always.

Money, it can give you power, control, strength. It can give you wings to fly. It can give you the whole world, if only you can pay the bill. It's all he's ever really cared about. He's a businessman, and a good one at that.

But she… She's as much about business as he is. But she also believes in Rambaldi (that rambling old man), believes in a _cause_. He laughs at that, long and hard, and all that earns him is another one of her moods (she knows just as well as he does that secretly he loves it when she gets angry).

They work well together, he will easily admit that. Both on missions and in bed, they instinctively know just what to do, how to reach their object in the fastest way. Together, they're almost invincible (if only she didn't let that fool of a husband get in the way).

If asked whether he would sacrifice her for money, for power, for control, he wouldn't hesitate to answer. Yes, of course he would. Nothing matters more to him than money.

(but recently he's started doubting if he could actually go through with it)

_**aliasaliasalias.**_

He dreams again. It's never her in his dreams, never in person. But everything he does, says or feels in that state has something to do with her, unavoidably so. She's the streets he walks and the air he breathes, the bench he sits on and the newspaper he reads.

He tells himself it's just old habits dying hard. Loss is inevitable in everyone's life, but that doesn't make it any easier to deal with. He lost her, in a cruel and unfortunate way. He'd barely learned to handle himself again, just to have her show up, alive and in desperate need of support, comfort, protection. In desperate need of him.

But he isn't hers any more. He belongs to someone else – to his beautiful blonde wife. And he is a man who doesn't break the rules, who would never break a marriage. He's the boy scout – always has been. It's the rules that keep us alive, his father always said. In their line of business, you don't go rogue. You stick to the rules.

(secretly he wishes he could break them all, one day)

But for now, he dreams.

_AN: sorry for the weird line breaks – but it wouldn't let me enter any other ones, so it's __**aliasaliasalias. **_


End file.
